Raub Brock lists HQDG, an active dividend-growth ETF priced at 0.50%

Raub Brock Capital Management listed an actively managed large-cap dividend-growth fund on Nasdaq last week and charged 0.50% for a concentrated process it has run in separately managed accounts since 1999. The Raub Brock Dividend Growth ETF —HQDG last traded at $24.92 as of 11:33 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday, September 8, on volume of 1,619 shares.

The 0.50% fee matches the T. Rowe Price Dividend Growth ETF BTDVG, live since August 4, 2020, and the Harbor Dividend Growth Leaders ETF CGDIV. It is nowhere near the 0.04% on the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF AVIG, which already tracks U.S. dividend growers at index scale.

What —HQDG is built to buy

The fund arrived as a series of Tidal Trust IV, with Tidal Investments LLC as adviser and Raub Brock as sub-adviser, after a February filing that named Empowered Funds as adviser to a series of EA Series Trust. The prospectus became effective September 1. Market pages disagree on the first trading date, citing September 2, 3, or 4; the shares have a recorded session as early as Thursday, September 3, when they closed at $25.02 on 1,403 shares.

Under normal circumstances the fund puts at least 80% of net assets, plus borrowings, into equities of dividend-paying companies. The starting universe is large-capitalization names above $10 billion with at least five consecutive years of dividend increases. The fund is classified as non-diversified, so it can put a larger share of assets into fewer issuers than a diversified fund is allowed to. Depositary receipts are allowed.

Raub Brock’s SMA process, described on the firm’s September 30, 2025 fact sheet, excludes companies involved in alcohol, gambling, tobacco, civilian firearms, military weapons, and nuclear power. That is not a rounding error. The iShares Core Dividend Growth ETF ADGRO counted Philip Morris among its top 10 holdings this week.

The prospectus does not lock in the book you will actually get. It sets no target number of holdings, no weighting formula, and no rebalance calendar, and holdings have not been disclosed. Raub Brock describes its Dividend Growth Portfolio as a concentrated, low-turnover list of about 20 large-cap names. That is the process the firm is selling. It is not a binding ETF rule.

The SMA’s record, and the last fund wrapper

Raub Brock’s fact sheet dated September 30, 2025, reports composite results for that SMA. Those figures are the manager’s record.

If the ETF holds that same concentrated, exclusion-screened book, those are the results a 0.50% fee is asking you to underwrite, against products that already own dividend growth for 0.04% to 0.08%.

The firm has tried a public fund wrapper before. The Raub Brock Dividend Growth Fund, RBDGX, opened on December 31, 2019. On April 1, 2021, the board approved a plan of liquidation, closed the fund to new investment immediately, and set a liquidation date of on or about April 7, 2021.

Priced with T. Rowe, not with Vanguard

Cheap, liquid dividend-growth index funds already exist, as do active ETFs at the same 0.50% sticker, including BTDVG and CGDIV. Franklin Templeton listed its own version, the Franklin Dividend Growth ETF CFRIZ, on August 27, 2025; a year on, it still has $5.46 million in assets.

—HQDG has no published asset figure yet. The shares’ market value was $74.4 million as of late morning Tuesday. If Raub Brock runs the SMA inside the ETF, that 20-name book will look nothing like the incumbents. Concentration is the structural case for the fee. The composite is the test of that case.

—HQDG’s first sessions

Friday, September 4, volume was 2,015 shares. Tuesday’s 1,619 shares, counted as of 11:33 a.m. Eastern, sit in the same neighborhood as that full session. Average daily volume is about 1,700 shares.

Creation and redemption still work in the background for authorized participants. For anyone buying in the open market, the book is thin.

If you want this manager’s concentrated, exclusion-screened process in an exchange-traded wrapper, —HQDG is now that wrapper, at 0.50%, with almost no secondary-market depth. If you want dividend-growth exposure, AVIG and ADGRO already sell it, cheaper, and in size.